First off let me start off by saying that this Brew Day was our 5th beer, 3rd all-grain and first 10 gallon batch.
We started off the day setting up to bottle our last beer, an American Wheat Ale, and realized that the spigot on our bottling bucket was broken. We had to make a run to the LBHS for a new spigot. This set our day back at least an hour, more like 1.5.
Next up I setup the equipment on the new brew bench and started heating my strike water. When it was time to mash, I realized that my mash tun had been too close to the burner and had started to melt. Luckily it was only some cosmetic damage, but it still ticked me off that I was dumb enough to not think that it would be a problem.
I wanted to mash at 152, so I had my digital thermometer in while I was stirring. It was reading 153 for awhile and then skipped 152 altogether and jumped down to 151. I figured, close enough, but once again it pissed me off that first my spigot failed, then my mash tun was damaged, now my thermometer had screwed me.
I took the pre-boil gravity and it was 1.030 at 152 degrees which gave me 1.050 after temperature correction.
Now to the boil, this was the second time using my keggle, so I am still working on tuning my equipment setup in BeerSmith. I decided to forego my hop spider and just put the hops in the boil. I wasn't paying attention and we had a boil over after the 10 minute hop addition. With the boil done we chilled down to 70 degrees and started the whirlpool. We let it sit for about 25 minutes before starting to drain.
My OG reading though was only 1.054!?!?! I was supposed to be at 1.060. How do I boil for an hour and only get .004 difference? Did my hydrometer fail me too?
Final disaster of the day was transferring the wort to the fermenters. I had planned on getting 11 gallons of fermentable wort, but the hop sludge at the bottom of my keggle ate I'm guessing about 1.5-2 gallons and I only wound up with 9-9.5 gallons. I haven't been able to get that cone of trub at the bottom of my keggle. I'm wondering if I am whirlpooling correctly. How do I mess that up? I stir and stir until the wort is spinning. I don't actually get a vortex, should I?
So at the end of the day, I have questionable equipment, a possibly inaccurate OG reading and less beer than I wanted.
Any thoughts, tips, etc.?
I'm guessing your pre-boil gravity was off. I don't believe that hydrometer corrections are accurate at that high a temperature. You either need to let your sample cool down to ~80 or lower, or you need to pick up a refractometer. Another advantage to a refractometer is that your sample is a couple of drops vs. a tube full.
How many ounces of hops did you boil that you lost almost 2 gallons to the hops? I don't think I've ever lost more than a gallon, even when boiling 8-10 oz of hops. I use hop bags or into the fermenter through a course metal strainer. This has the added advantage of aerating your wort.
I have never successfully whirlpooled with a nice hop/trub cone in the middle of the kettle; I think you need a pump for that to happen, or you need to be really good at stirring just on the outside of your kettle so as not to disturb to cone in the middle. I'm also guessing that you would need to stir for at least 10 minutes, probably more, to get a cone to form. I pour as much from the kettle into the fermenter as possible, including trub. As noted above, the most filtering I do is a hop sack and a course metal strainer into the fermenter. The vast majority of the trub in the brew kettle will settle out during fermentation, and anything that remains after fermentation will settle out after a week or two in the fridge.
All in all, it sounds like it wasn't too bad a day. At least you made beer, right?
-Adam
Adam,
I used 9 oz of hops all added directly into the boil. After draining about 8.5 gallons of wort, all that was coming through was green sludge. Completely clogged my funnel & strainer. Next time I'll use my hop spider.
It sounds like I should invest in a refractometer.
Jay,
What kind of strainer are you using? A course metal one or the little plastic guy that comes with the funnel at the homebrew shop? Hint: the little plastic guy is worthless. All it does is get clogged. If it was clogging a normal metal strainer, then yeah, that's a pain, and you have to decide whether you want to capture all of that wort and have a big pile of trub at the bottom of your fermenter, or whether you want to lose that volume of beer. As I said previously, my choice is to dump it all in and let it settle out, but I don't know how good/bad 9 ounces of hops in the fermenter would be.
I have a ghetto hop spider (5 gallon paint strainer bag clipped to the side of my kettle), and it's served me well for 2 years.
Good luck!
-Adam
Yeah, I'm using the little plastic guy. So you are just using a normal metal strainer like you would find at say Target?
Definitely get rid of that little plastic filter. Definitely one of the most worthless "accessories" in homebrewing. I'm sure target has something. We have several like this at the brewhouse:
http://www.amazon.com/Winco-MS3A-8D-Strainer-Double-Wooden/dp/B001VZERX4...
If your fermenting in a bucket just go to the paint section at home depot and buy a 2-pack of 5 gal. paint straners. They fit nicely in a ferm bucket, have a elastic collar on them....and just pour your cooled wort in the bucket...pull the bag up and out and let wort drain out...
I also reccomend a refractometer...I bought mine on eBay and it has gravity and brix...i pull a sample with the included pipet and if it is hot I let it set a few minutes (it has ATC) it will usually change about 4 pts...they are easy to colabrate with water...I only use a hydrometer to test FG...since refractometer can't adjust for alcohol...
DOH! Hey at least ya didn't leave the burner on while chilling the wort and wondering why it isn't cooling below 80 degrees...